HFM

Back on Mars today. No projects around the house -- too busy doing laundry from the trip & resting up for the work week. Adrienne had the great idea to take Zoey to a nearby state park, so we did that, too, to take advantage of unbelievably warm weather. Here's a brave dog, wading into the ocean for the first time in her life: She had fun splashing around, & chasing the lizards & squirrels in the park. She thinks she's a crack hunter, but luckily for us -- and the lizards & squirrels -- she's not. In other news, while in NH, I got to pitch in on someone else's home improvement project: my dad is refinishing the walls in a half (quarter?) bath he has off the kitchen. Mostly I held the flashlight & the tools, & held panels up to be nailed in, but it was fun working with him, & it was great experience to learn how to do a thing like this. I even learned how to install a light fixture without killing myself. Hey! And, like a project on Mars, the...

Even though she's sad to see me go away for two weeks, Zoey is being a trouper by helping with the laundry and packing. "It just wouldn't be right if you left here & didn't smell like me."

The summer's vegetable experimental plantings have done well, & I have learned a lot about what will do well & where. Favas did fairly well on the front porch: Destined for the roasting pan! The planters I had them in were too small, & while favas tolerate some shade, most of the porch is perhaps too shady. Next time, I will put them in the back yard. Here is a little box full of the bounty of our garden, put together for a long-lost friend who came over for coffee: Carrots, mint, lemon verbena, cilantro, roses. The carrots were wonderfully sweet, but didn't reach their full length because I didn't prepare a deep enough bed. More digging in my future! And/or buying seeds for one of those little stubby varieties instead. The cilantro did surprisingly well in a little shady spot under the lemon verbena, so more to go in there next time, as well. Later today, I head off to go enjoy the bounty of autumn in New England for two weeks. More updates from Mars when I ret...

Friday was the most important day of the year: my birthday! Adrienne threw me the dinner party of dinner parties: Breakfast for Dinner, featuring Rochette's should-be-famous-they're-so-good bean recipe from Lowell, & several of the best people ever born. Here are some photos: The beans go in the slow cooker with a bunch of salt pork & a tiny bit of ketchup. Nine hours later: magic! The vegetarian-friendly version. Scrambling is in your future. English muffins! Fancy butter! Champagne! Sugar cubes & bitters for champagne cocktails! Susie & I having lively conversation in the kitchen. I am wearing my excellent new pitbull-with-a-halo t-shirt that Amanda & Matt gave me. Zoey had fun at the party too, working to get some biscuits out of a toy. For the non-champagne-inclined, gin & sodas with borage flower ice cubes. The cooking begins! I was in such heaven with the meal that I forgot to take photos of it before we had devoured everything. Including the gorg...

We needed more dog food. We decided that instead of borrowing a car to go get another 30-pound bag (& figuring out how to pack in yet another errand), we would just order one from Amazon. That worked out great, although it came in a box the size of a coffin. I was about to cut the box up to put out with the recycling, when I thought it might be fun to make something out of it first, & see if I could put the dog in it & snap a photo. Because, really, why not? This is Zoey's airplane. I made it in a couple hours on Labor Day: This is what Zoey had to say about the second part of the idea: You want me to what? I'm going to put it out on the driveway with a "free" sign on it this weekend, in case some family with little kids passing by would like to have it to play in.

And also, I started mulching the rose bushes with cut up wine & champagne corks that I've been saving for a while & meaning to recycle. Only had enough to do one. Better get drinking!

We decided to postpone painting Adrienne's office -- she had too much work to do this weekend, so rather than try to squeeze the project in & end up stressed out, yelling at each other about the proper technique for painting trim, we decided to just put it off for another weekend. Instead, I took advantage of some excellent weather & tackled a yard project that's been on my mind for a couple weeks: turning the panda corner into a little reading/meditation/morning coffee/sitting spot. As you can see, the placement of the lemon verbena, hibiscus-like plant, & two rose bushes set this corner sort of awkwardly apart from the rest of the yard, making it basically unusable as-is: View when you enter the yard. View from the side. What's back there: ten square feet of grass & spiders. I've been reading two books about garden design that gave me the idea for the project. One pointed out that even in a small yard, it's nice to have multiple places to sit ...